head to head · open source
lynis vs privado
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. privado has 665 stars, 76 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. lynis leads on adoption by 2,398% (16,611 vs 665 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; privado is written in Python under LGPL-3.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, privado 11%. privado was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (compliance, gdpr), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| lynis | privado | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 665 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 76 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lynis if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick privado if
- You want the privado feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and privado fits your workflow better
About lynis
[Documentation] [Documentation]: Do you like this software? Star the project and become a stargazer. lynis Lynis Security auditing and hardening tool, for UNIX based systems. Lynis is a security auditing tool for systems based on UNIX like Linux, macOS, BSD, and others. It performs an in depth security scan and runs on the system itself. The primary goal is to test security defenses and provide tips for further system hardening . It will also scan for general system information, vulnerable software packages, and possible configuration issues. Lynis was commonly used by system administrators and auditors to…
read the full lynis overview →
About privado
What is Privado? Privado is an open source static code analysis tool to discover data flows in the code. It detects more than 110 personal data elements being processed and further maps the data flow from the point of collection to "sinks" such as external third parties, databases, logs, and internal APIs. Supported languages We support Java and Python in GA. Our Enterprise offering covers all programming languages, and we're working on adding support for more languages to OSS. Support for JS/TS is coming soon! Quick Start First, make sure you have Docker installed on your system, then follow these simple steps…
read the full privado overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or privado more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and privado has 665. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and privado free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and privado under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and privado?
lynis is written in Shell and privado in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, lynis or privado?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose privado if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.